When a telephone answering system suffers loss or interruption of power, important operational information stored in the form of data in electronic circuits, microprocessors, or random access memories is often also lost. When power is restored, important messages, message counts, and message locations are lost, and the system may malfunction or become inoperative. This is particularly troublesome for single tape or single cassette answering machines because several locations on the tape or cassette must be maintained in system memory, including the end of the outgoing message and the beginning and end of incoming messages. Many telephone answering systems ignore these problems. Thus, if a power interruption occurs, this important operational data is lost. Other systems try to solve these problems with costly battery backup systems or non-volatile memory for the electronic circuits, microprocessors or random access memories.